The Fashion Junkie Controversy
The fashion industry sets trends, promotes behaviours- it tells people not only how they are supposed to look but also how they should act and live. Modernity has accentuated the need for aesthetics and design; similarly to the way architecture and other arts were emerging and breaking from the traditional, the fashion industry was to be born in a new and stronger realm as well. Though most designers were and still are masculine figures, women seem to play a much more vital part in the fashion industry. Fashion brands were created by designers as uniform trends and representations of their visions- creating everything from clothing, to fragrances and jewelry. The most provoking fashion ad campaigns usually involve…show more content… According to Katherine Frith et al., in “The Construction of Beauty”, media plays an important role in assigning beauty standards and “magazines, in particular, have received harsh criticism of perpetuating an unrealistic beauty ideal that privileges youth, thinness and whiteness”(193). Though the idea of the beauty myth and fashion has been the core issue generated by the industry, the 21st century branding managed to emphasize its messages and market its products through the use of even more controversial topics. Beauty is no longer only about thinness and whiteness, it now involves more complex principles and ideals; the fashion industry with its brands have become, for some, a way of…show more content… The Sisley “Fashion Junkie” ad captures two unhealthy-looking models evidently snorting what appears to be a dress. The “Fashion Junkie” stimulates obsessive behaviour; it projects the idea that some individuals need new apparel, similarly to the way that an addict needs his “fix”. The ad also conveys the ideological life of modern models and the promiscuity of the principle workers of the fashion industry. Over the years, models have been associated with unhealthy lifestyles due to excessive dieting, drug-use (particularly cocaine) and constant partying. While one of the models begins to “snort”, the other one looks high. They are dressed provocatively, bearing part of a breast, and based on the dark background, seem to be located at a bar-characteristic of the unconventional lifestyle related to the use of cocaine. The placement of the credit card by the white dress, insinuates the most probable use of the card for the “cutting” and lining of the drug while simultaneously insinuating the correlation between fashion and money. The brand name is placed strategically in the centre of the ad, in-between “the action” so that it ultimately captions all the attention and is embedded in the viewer's